SOUTHERN AFRICA. 403 
We had little doubt that the greater number of the Hot- 
tentot men, who were assembled at the bay, after receiving 
favorable accounts from their comrades of the treatment they 
experienced in the British service, would enter as volunteers 
into this corps ; but what was to be done with the old people, 
the women and the children ? Klaas Stuurman found no dif- 
ficulty in making a provision for them. " Restore," says he, 
" the country of which our fathers have been despoiled by 
" the Dutch, and we have nothing more to ask." I en- 
deavoured to convince him how little advantage they were 
likely to derive from the possession of a country, without 
any other property, or the means of deriving a subsistence 
from it : but he had the better of the argument. " We lived 
" very contentedly," said he, " before these Dutch plun- 
" derers molested us ; and why should we not do so again, 
" if left to ourselves ? Has not the Groot Baas (the Great 
" Master) given plenty of grass-roots, and berries, and 
" grashoppers for our use; and, till the Dutch destroyed 
" them, abundance of wild animals to hunt ? And will they 
*' not return and multiply when these destroyers are gone ?" 
We prevailed, however, upon Klaas to deliver up their arms, 
and, in the mean time, to follow the troops until some ar- 
rangement could be made for their future welfare. 
Proceeding on our march, along the banks of the Sunday 
River, and among the vast thickets that almost entirely 
covered this part of the country, we fell in with a prodio-ious 
number of Kaffers with their cattle, belonging, as they told 
us, to a powerful chief named Congo. This man was at the 
head of all the other emigrant chiefs who liad fled from the 
